La Bête BROADWAY REVIEWS

NY TIMES

TM

CHIC TRIB

AP

NY MAG

American playwright David Hirson's rollicking 1991 play, La Bete, is a comic tour de force about Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), a high-minded classical dramatist who loves only the theater, and Valere (Mark Rylance), a low-brow street clown who loves only himself. When the fickle princess (Joanna Lumley) decides she's grown weary of Elomire's royal theatre troupe, he and Valere are left fighting for survival as art squares off with ego in a literary showdown for the ages.

NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF La Bête

BEN BRANTLEY

October 14, 2010: There are many contenders for the title of the most obnoxious person on Broadway. I’m sure you could rattle off a dozen deserving candidates. But though it’s early in the season, one man has already put in his bid with such insistently annoying — and supremely entertaining — style that we may as well concede the honors to him right now. Mark Rylance, step forward and claim your crown.

THEATERMANIA REVIEW OF La Bête

October 14, 2010: Mark Rylance dazzled audiences with his high-octane physicality in the recent Broadway revival of Boeing-Boeing, and the Tony Award-winning actor proves to be equally astonishing in Matthew Warchus' often hilarious revival of David Hirson's 1991 rhyming-verse play, La Bete, now at the Music Box.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE REVIEW OF La Bête

October 14, 2010: At the top of David Hirson's faux-Moliere souffle, “La Bete,” the astoundingly intense actor Mark Rylance flawlessly delivers a monologue — a rhyming, tour de force, just-can't-stop logorrhea — that occupies something like 400 lines of script on the page and takes at least a half-hour to deliver on a Broadway stage.

ASSOCIATED PRESS REVIEW OF La Bête

October 14, 2010: When the play "La Bete" debuted almost 20 years ago, it exposed a trans-Atlantic fault-line: It bombed on Broadway but then won the best new comedy award in London. Now a revival is back in New York after receiving a warm reception in the West End.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lifestyle/broadway-return-of-la-bete-with-mark-rylance-and-david-hyde-pierce-may-leave-you-speechless-104990134.html#ixzz12OGoYRvu

NEW YORK MAGAZINE REVIEW OF La Bête

October 14, 2010: Mark Rylance is a fool’s fool. Belching, bragging, accompanying his own self-aggrandizing soliloquies with stunning four-part flatulence, he tears into the first half of La Bête, David Hirson’s 1991 meta-Moliere oddity, with a 400-line megalogue. In rhymed couplets. Not a syllable of which, I’m happy to report, isn’t uproarious.

DidHeLikeIt.com is your official guide and translator for all the Broadway theatre reviews by Ben Brantley, the chief theatre critic for the New York Times. At DidHeLikeIt.com you can find out if He liked a show or not with a quick glance of the Ben-o-meter! We also use the Ben-o-meter for all of the other prominent publications such as New York Daily News,Newsday, USA Today, Variety, and more!

And now with the new Did He Like It App we'll send you push notifications every time a new Broadway review comes out. Never be out of the loop again! To download the Did He Like It App, click here.